star Children

[Ophidia]

Re: star Children

... I was a gifted child and I've had a hard time with confidence my whole adult life because I struggled to live up to my own ideals and the expectations that were placed on me by my parents and teachers growing up.

I've had similar problems because I was a GaT (Gifted and Talented) kid, and everyone always told me 'you can be anything you want to be - you could even be president!', but never received any kind of guidance or mentoring to find out exactly what 'anything I wanted to be' actually was. No one wanted to 'squelch my creativity' so I picked up and dropped new interests & hobbies like they were hot potatoes, never was encouraged to dedicate myself to anything because I should 'try to find my own special niche', and by the time I was about 12 or 13, that 'gifted and talented' schtick got lost in the shuffle of the public jr. high/high school system and the rest of my family & guardians seemed to believe that 'gifted and talented' meant 'super-expensive private school tuition'.

So now I'm a 37-year-old slacker with a dead-end job. Yeah, feeling real gifted and talented right about now, lol.

[Hawkfeathers]

Re: star Children

Yeah, that definitely seems to be how it goes. I had the highest grades, was in the National Spelling Bee, etc., but didn't "find myself" until my late 40's. Before then, I drifted through many dead-end jobs. I think people like us are not properly socialized in early life. I am just lucky that I had a breakthrough and am now leading a happy life. For me, it wasn't so much a sense of entitlement, rather the opposite. My mother always told me, no matter what you do there will always be somebody better. I guess she was trying to keep me grounded, but it made me give up.
In any event, it's all good now!

[thalassa]

Re: star Children

My experience as a "gifted" kid was more of being ignored. Like...you already know this, so we don't need to help you. And then when you *didn't* get something, or weren't acting appropriately for your intelligent level (as opposed to your age), then it was because you were doing it on purpose--I tutored a gifted girl when I was in college (her mom loved me because I could relate to her)...you might wonder *why* a gifted kid needs a tutor...but it boils down to just because a 5th grader is smart enough to be doing 8th grade work, it doesn't mean they know what an 8th grader knows as far as the proper presentation of that work--that maturity just isn't there yet. And unfortunately its seen as being lazy, or difficult and those kids almost *never* get help, and are never really were "taught" to study, because you just *got* everything else...but eventually you run out of "just got it" and you need the skills that everyone else was taught or learned much earlier in life--like time management, studying, etc.

I had a 168 IQ at the age of 6, I got straight A's, was in the gifted program and was in all honors and AP classes (except for math)...but I always had problems with math because I have dyscalculia, which wasn't diagnosed (albeit unofficially by a friend of mine who specializes in dyslexic disorders) until well after I graduate HS (often when I'm just typing it even comes out, particularly if I'm tired and it will sometimes take me 5 or even 10 tries to type a word because I scramble the letters). But of course...a gifted kid couldn't possibly have a learning disability, it must have just been because I wasn't *trying* hard enough...

[DanieMarie]

Re: star Children

I was actually wanting to ask if people here had similar or other experiences....I had a good feeling that there were lots of other gifted kids here!

My parents tried to raise me not to have a sense of entitlement...my mom even refused to skip me a grade or two even though it was offered (apparently....I never knew about this). They did have super high expectations though (still do).....if I slacked and got a B (as I sometimes did in high school....I got really bored and figured out I could coast for a while) they'd be like "you didn't get an A," but my brother could barely pass and they'd be like "at least you passed." And while it was true that I sometimes earned lower grades because of less effort, I didn't stop putting in effort because I was lazy. I was bored sometimes and also even then I started struggling with depression. I also always got told by teachers and even friends in school that I was going to change the world. It's a nice ambition but changing the world needs to have people behind you, and getting people behind you involves a lot of confidence and people skills, and those are things I'm only just starting to get ahold of. At this point getting a job is a struggle, let alone changing the world. I'm really shy and I'm getting a lot better, but it's something I have to work at.

I did know other gifted kids who had a sense of entitlement, like they -deserved- the best, and it was a huge disappointment in adulthood that it wasn't just handed to them because they were super intelligent. Like Hawkfeathers said, there's always someone more intelligent, more talented, out there, and you have to work for what you get in life!

[Thjoth]

Re: star Children

I had a 168 IQ at the age of 6, I got straight A's, was in the gifted program and was in all honors and AP classes (except for math)...but I always had problems with math because I have dyscalculia, which wasn't diagnosed (albeit unofficially by a friend of mine who specializes in dyslexic disorders) until well after I graduate HS (often when I'm just typing it even comes out, particularly if I'm tired and it will sometimes take me 5 or even 10 tries to type a word because I scramble the letters). But of course...a gifted kid couldn't possibly have a learning disability, it must have just been because I wasn't *trying* hard enough...

See, I was the opposite of you. I had an IQ of 148 (although I think I agree with Stephen Hawking that IQ doesn't mean that much) and my mental switch always had two settings: "Really interested" and "F*ck around." Guess which setting it was on from about the 4th grade until I graduated high school? Never studied, never put any effort in, got straight C's through high school, so the expectations were always set low and I had no problem meeting them. Milk the system, baby, and the system will treat you just fine. For the first year and a half of college I assumed I was getting a two year degree in computers to just go to some dead end desk job somewhere for the rest of my life, so I followed the mantra of "D is for Diploma" and didn't really try there, either. I was a psychologist's nightmare because apparently they don't have anything to describe a broken give-a-damn. If you as a teacher couldn't give me something that I found seriously interesting, then you could go get bent for all I cared.

Although my study habits are still nonexistent thanks to this, I'm fully plugged into academia now and I'm trying to get some advanced degrees, and let me tell you, all those average and below grades are coming back to bite me in the ass hard. I wish I could send a message to my past-self and just say "Dude, just put in a LITTLE effort. Just a TINY BIT. PLEASE."

The reason I say this is, if these "indigo children" do exist, what's to say they just don't give a shit? What if they're sitting in the back of the room wearing their rock band T-Shirt and not paying attention because the teacher bores them? I mean, I doubt I'm an "indigo child" or whatever because I've yet to receive a message from the planet Omicron Persei 8, but I really don't think you would be able to tell such a thing from a little kid's personality anyway, being the nebulous entity that it is. My personality now has about as much in common with my 18 year old self as my 18 year old self had with my 6 year old self.

[Medusa]

Re: star Children

I had a best friend in elementary school. She was in gifted classes. She was particularly gifted with playing the flute and taught me how to play chess. This was about the 6th grade I guess. And her parents were Pagan bikers who smoked pot! Of course she was gifted but peed the bed alot. And I wonder to this day if that ever came in handy for her....

[Tylluan Penry]

Re: star Children

I don't think anyone ever felt I was a gifted child (or adult) come to that. I was basically a pain in the arse and a fully paid up member of the awkward brigade.

There was a theory in one place that I worked that I must be a martian because I liked the colour green....

[Ophidia]

Re: star Children

No one would ever tell me my IQ scores when I was a kid, but they sure did put me through enough tests. I don't know if it was because the scores were painfully low & I am actually some kind of idiot savant, or if it was because they were ridiculously high & everyone thought I had cheated somehow.

And now they don't really give official IQ tests :P

[MaskedOne]

Re: star Children

My standing real life exposure to the concept of indigo children is a store owner claiming that a friend of a friend fit the description within 3 days of hiring her. Considering the many and varied issues I have with the design of his store, his actions in town and a criminal record that I'm 90% certain belongs to him (same uncommonly spelled name, relative proximity, a number of linking background traits), I'm holding to him pulling **** out of his *** to try and get in the lady's pants. Outside of his use of the term though, I don't think its a useful division atm. The kid is human. They might be observant, bright, etc but they are still going to have basic human needs and make human mistakes. Anything more complex than that can be handled case by case.

[Dez]

Re: star Children

I'm finding everyone's experiences really interesting.

For me, it's a bit different...and I need to back up a bit to explain. My mother homeschooled us with no training in teaching. She'd had great grades and enough drive to become a great teacher (or a doctor or lawyer or whatever she'd wanted), but the LDS church was in the middle of fighting the ERA while she was in school, so she got her degree at BYU in Marriage, Family, and Human Development. Hated it. Rarely, if ever, did any of the things she learned again, even cooking skills. Never taught her children how to do them. She was sure, though, that the end of the world was coming, and she needed to prepare her intelligent, gifted future children for it.

I was one of those flashcard babies. By the time I was two and a half I had been thoroughly drilled on a number of subjects, and could spout answers on demand. We had flashcards for numbers, shapes, colors, insects, dog breeds, fish, famous paintings, etc, etc...only the art really seems to have stuck.

Then she got interested in the unschooling movement. She taught me to read by 5, and then I was on my own for most of the day, free to learn about whatever I wanted. We didn't have many of the toys, puzzles, and activities that kindergarten children normally do, but we had a lot of books and a big yard. Between the age of 5 and 8 all I really remember doing is playing in the garden and reading. I expressed interest in the little grocery store math books, and learned my math basics that way. I ran through most of our books pretty quickly, and so by 8 was bored of reading our mythology books over and over again, and started getting into the adult books on art, botany, and my dad's copy of the Riverside Shakespeare. My parents were having behavioral issues with me by then, though, and so as a threat they asked me if I wanted to be sent to public school. I went to the second half of fourth grade, and loved it. My mom was embarrassed by how lopsided my skills were, particularly the b's and c's I was getting in math, and so she had me work on math for the majority of that summer, and refused to let me go back.

At that point, my mom got text books and took a more regimented approach. I'd be left with my books, and at the end of the day she'd check my work, and if I got any wrong she'd get mad. This led to some five years of almost daily yelling, and the issues that made them send me to school in the first place got much, much worse. Each fall, I'd ask to go back to school, and be turned down. By 7th grade I was a very angry, depressed child, and by 8th I was solving my arguments with my mom by stealing her answer keys, copying them down or photocopying them at the library, and then "missing" one or two problems per 60 a day to keep her from getting suspicious. Yeah, I know...I was jerk. Since I was alone at a desk down in the basement all day, I read when I was supposed to be studying. My dad's old textbooks from college and his Master's textbooks in Psychology primarily. This was pretty much how things were until my senior year, which I spent practicing music for 4 hours per day, not including groups I was in(everyone expected me to be a music major, possibly a psych major to be like my dad...my interests in science, anthropology and archeology were discouraged as "too worldly"), and studying for the ACT. I was accepted to BYU on the basis of my score--32--even though I had nothing else to show. Never had an IQ test.

College was hard, I'd never done anything even remotely like it before, but got b's and c's my first semester, with an A in ancient hebrew, which I'd studied before. My grades went downhill after marrying L right before my second semester (unsurprisingly), and went downhill again with my reproductive issues before, during, and after having my daughter. I was on academic probation before dropping out, and the councilor I was working with suggested that I had ADHD, on the attention side.

I want to go back to school so badly, but at the same time I'm more then a bit terrified that I'll do poorly again. There are a lot of skills that I just don't have, and consistency is hard for me. So much for my mother's "special" wonder children.

[FantasyWitch]

Re: star Children

I was a gifted child (I don't like using the word "gifted" btw, sounds damn pretentious if you ask me) and I spent most of primary school isolated and bored out of my mind. I was very much the weird kid who sat reading books at play time and finishing my work extra quickly because the only thing that really challanged me any more was being the first one to finish, because it was a given I would always get full marks.
The system was changing while I was at school though. By primary 6 (that is age 10-11 for my friends across the pond) I was fast tracked and doing high school maths and english. It wasn't a LOT better but it was enough to stop me going mental. One thing I will say though, being a "gifted" child made me socially inept. There were few people who would play with me and I had few stable friends. I was a nice kid, but I was weird and weird is never good when you are young. So being academically adept has the effect of socially stunting a young kid. It would have been much easier on me if I had been an average kid who tried hard to be good academically, rather than someone who was a naturally quick learner but completely baffled by social interaction. I never understood how people were so different to how they seemed on tv or in books, and why people went out to be mean. It confused the hell out of me.

At high school it got a little bit better because I met people who were in a similar situation as me. Kids who could do the work, and were really smart but couldn't pass socially and so were isolated. It was rare to meet someone who managed to do both. I thought there was a girl in my year who was good at doing both because she had loads of friends and did almost as well as me at most things, but it turned out she had major issues in relationships and ended up leaving school with nothing and is now pregnant and living in a council house.

Also teachers found it difficult to understand why I was so frustrated at the work they were giving me. I was good at it so why would I be miserable? I was stuck in classes with people who were boring at best and nasty at worst. I was very badly bullied (for a number of reasons) in 1st-3rd year at school and having my dad working there as the school librarian did not help at all. If I was cheeky or tired or not listening in class the teachers would skip all the normal disciplinary actions and just go and speak to my dad. It was a nightmare because all I wanted to do was learn, but it was such a SLOW process and people were so boring and pointless.

I got all As (or 1s) in my exams all the way through high school, but it wasn't until my 5th and 6th year (16-18) that I finally began to be challenged because I was doing the subjects I loved and suddenly we were encouraged to go above and beyond the tick sheet attitude of all other exams. So I came into my own at that point. However it took till the last two years of my education for my potential to be tapped? That is kid of pathetic.

Now I can use it to my advantage more. I work hard at the studio to become the art student I want to be and I work hard to attain what I want. But this determination has taken 18 years for me to be able to use properly and I find that really sad. I almost wish I hadn't been a good pupil because I think life would have been much easier.

[Taiga Pagan]

Re: star Children

I second that (FantasyWitch), average people are too dumb to know how to use two-legged libraries, and should be not be allowed to have direct access to them.

When they do, it's to steal and harm, just to show they can be superior themselves, which is totally false.

[LiadanWillows]

Re: star Children

My personal opinion, all children are special and unique. All people are special and unique. We all have gifts and faults and something to contribute to the world.

[Medusa]

Re: star Children

yes yes. Everyone is special. Everyone gets a participation sticker. I've never met so many special people in one spot. I must be the luckiest average joe around!

*continues popping air out of your special sails.

[Tylluan Penry]

Re: star Children

I second that (FantasyWitch), average people are too dumb to know how to use two-legged libraries, and should be not be allowed to have direct access to them.

When they do, it's to steal and harm, just to show they can be superior themselves, which is totally false.

I'm assuming that a two legged library is the same as an ordinary one? Or are there four legged libraries too?

People can be taught to use libraries, it's not rocket science. Find a book, borrow it. If you don't know or can't find it, then ask the librarian. I have organised protest marches to save a local library before now and I will do it again if anyone so much as lays a finger on them. Libraries are special.